[WikiEN-l] Unsourced biographies

[Charlotte Webb]

On 4/27/07,  Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now, yes, we obviously can find sources for articles on all the prime  
> ministers of Senegal. That's not the issue. The issue is that there  
> are very few editors working in this area - often not enough to  
> handle a wave of PRODs on their articles. It's an area of high  
> importance to the project and low participation. To add a rule that  
> allows for deletion in this area makes it far too easy to overwhelm  
> these vital areas with deletions and gut our coverage with no  
> attention to whether or not the articles are actually erroneous.

I share concerns with Phil here, a form of systemic bias I think. If (an
estimated 16,000?) articles are marked for deletion at the same time, yes we
we will probably end up with a several hundred impeccably referenced
articles about Foo-Idol contestants, state senators, professional sports
people, porn stars, even webcartoonists... all of whose biographies would
otherwise be in poorer shape.

That's all groovy, but not at the price of total loss of biographical
coverage outside the English-speaking world, even for a few weeks.
Realistically it will probably be much longer than that, with a limited
number of people who would have the time and energy help facilitate the
reconstruction.

And a limited number of admins willing to act as a liaison between the
deleted content and the editors who care to improve it.

And a limited number of people who know where to find Senegal on a map or
care what goes on there.

And a limited amount of time before these people quit the project in
disgust.

> BLPs and sourcing are a problem, but they need a far more subtle
> solution than this.

Userfy? Perhaps move to a designated area of project space specifically not
indexed by Google? I've got some more ideas if this doesn't sound too
outlandish yet.

Charlotte
-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Unsourced-biographies-tf3649903.html#a10242819
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.